34 weeks pregnant

I'm really heading towards the pointy end of this pregnancy now, and I'm ready to meet the baby. I'm still healthy, and fairly mobile, but I'm getting lots of very strong braxton-hicks contractions which exhaust me. Every time I get up from a chair, lean forwards, get out of bed, or when I'm walking to playgroup or the shops, I get these really uncomfortable tightenings. I've had them for the last 3 weeks, so I guess my body is just preparing for labour. If I spend a few hours resting in bed (only possible on the weekends when Gareth is home to look after Jambin) they stop, so I'm confident they are just a warm-up for the real thing in 6 weeks or so.

I don't think my belly looks any bigger in these photos than what it did 3 weeks ago. I've put on 11kgs so far, which is a bit of a worry. I only put on 10kgs total with Jambin, and he weighed 4.86kgs, so the rest must have been placenta, amniotic fluid and blood volume. I lost it very quickly with breastfeeding. I'm guessing that this time I've probably put on a bit of padding as well as baby, and it might not be as easy to lose this time around.

Gareth, Jambin and I went to Maroubra Beach on Saturday and Sunday this weekend. It was so nice to dig a big hole in the sand and lie face-down for a little bit. I even got brave and strutted around, bare belly, in a bikini. Some may have mistaken me for a beached whale though.

 

 

Rice and lentil box

I made this toy for Jambin this afternoon. He loved it! And it only cost about $2 for the box - everything else I already had in my pantry. I used brown rice and red lentils because they were what I found in the pantry, but I also liked the colour contrast.

Of course, the rice and lentils didn't always remain in the box, but Jambin had fun helping me pick up all the little bits that "fell" out.

 

 

 

 

I should listen to my husband ....

... when he tells me that we only need to mash 2 huge potatoes for dinner, and not 3 as I insisted upon.

 

Drawing on the table

I sticky-taped a large piece of butchers paper onto our dining room table for Jambin to draw on. He does lots of drawing in notebooks, on his magna-doodle and on his chalkboard, but I thought he might like a larger canvas to play with.

The *best* bit, as far as he was concerned, was the join in the table sections that I'd taped the paper over. He discovered that if you run your pencil down the join, it makes the paper tear in a nice straight line.

 

 

 

Jambin's 1st Haircut

At nearly 2 years old, I finally bit the bullet and took the boy in for his first haircut. I had anticipated screaming, tantrums, and running away - he doesn't really like other people touching him, and having your hair cut is pretty confronting. But I think he was shocked - and he sat quietly the whole time without a peep. I took him to a kiddies hairdresser where he got to sit in an aeroplane with a steering wheel, watch Bob the Builder on his own personal DVD player in front of him, and was presented with a balloon and jelly beans afterwards.

We think he looks gorgeous - but I miss running my fingers through his lovely long curls.

 

 

 

 

At the park with Daddy

Gotta love daylight savings! These photos were taken at about 7pm, when Gareth took Jambin to the park across the road after he got home from work.

 

 

 

 

Shaving Cream

I had this bright idea. Shaving cream, food colouring, toddler .....
I thought it might teach him some interesting concepts about what happens when two colours get mixed, and a nice sensory experience with touching different textures.

The reality: 2 minutes preparation, 5 minutes 'play' (mostly tantrums), 45 minutes clean-up including bath and hair-washing.

Lessons learned: next time, child STARTS activity naked.

 

 

 

 

Belly Photos - 31wks pregnant

Actually 31 weeks and 3 days pregnant, with baby #2. Just yesterday I had someone say "not long to go now, hey?". You should have seen the look on their face when I told them I still had 9 weeks to go. But I'm fairly certain that I was larger than this with Jambin, and the obstetrician seems to think that this baby is on track to be a 'normal' size (as compared with Jambin, who was 4.86kgs, or 10lbs 11.5 oz). I'm still fairly comfortable moving around, and spend all day getting up and down off the floor and carrying 15kgs of Jambin up and down 3 flights of stairs. I can still put on my own knickers (standing up, no less!) and my own shoes. And my feet don't seem to have ballooned to enormous proportions like they did when I was pregnant with Jambin either.

Jambin likes to kiss the baby, and listen to it - he thinks it sounds like a truck.

 

 

 

 

This is what happens ...

... at 4.30pm when somebody refuses to go down for a nap all day.

What do I do now? If I wake him up, I lose my opportunity for some breathing room (he's been really, really hard work today). If I let him sleep, he's going to be awake til past midnight, and since he was up past midnight last night, I am too tired to be dealing with that all over again tonight.